


Smothered Secrets

by Danica_Dust



Series: Seasons of Secret Sighs [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bad Parent John Winchester, Dying Dean Winchester, Episode: s03e10 Dream a Little Dream, Episode: s03e11 Mystery Spot, F/M, SPN Swan Song Bingo, Season/Series 03, Short, The Trickster - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 05:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20924588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Danica_Dust/pseuds/Danica_Dust
Summary: SPN Swan Song Bingo: Season 3 - The TricksterSam wants to leave the Trickster be, but Dean won't let it go, while secrets abound.





	Smothered Secrets

It was Wednesday, the day after Tuesday, and Sam was different.

Sam had told Dean about the hundred-plus Tuesdays the Trickster had forced him to live through, and Dean understood that anyone would be a little off-balance after watching their brother die over and over again everyday for over three months.

But Dean knew his brother. And he knew that there was something else that Sam wasn’t telling him. Dean had no idea what that something could be, but Sam was definitely hiding some kind of secret.

After Sam had explained everything, Dean had wanted to hunt the bastard Trickster down immediately, but Sam had insisted that they get straight out of town—no breakfast.

So now, they were driving down the Interstate while Dean attempted to convince Sam to call Bobby so that they could lay down a plan to destroy the Trickster, once and for all.

Dean didn’t intend to hold anything back. Stake, silver, holy water, beheading, salt and fire. He was going to use it all. It was personal now.

But strangely, Sam wouldn’t call. And he wouldn’t let Dean pull over so they could make a plan themselves either.

He just told Dean to keep driving in a subdued voice.

Sam was normally a quiet guy, so that in itself wasn’t odd. It was the detachment with which he said it that had Dean worried.

Sam rarely withdrew into himself. That was Dean’s thing. So, this chilling blankness could only mean that something big had happened. Something more than just repetitive Tuesdays, even with Dean dying at the end of each one.

Dean, however, didn’t press the issue. Didn’t interrogate Sam to find out what he was keeping from him. Didn’t even subtly hint.

Why?

Because Dean had secrets of his own.

A pair of black eyes in his own face flashed in his mind.

Dean shuddered involuntarily, and then quickly glanced over at Sam, but Sam’s head was leaning against the car window and his eyes were closed.

Dean breathed out a silent sigh of relief.

_“You can’t escape me, Dean. You’re gonna die. And this_ _—this is what you’re gonna become.”_

Dean’s hands clenched the steering wheel, and he focused on the road. It was a bright, sunny day, yet his hands were clammy and he felt chilled.

_Sam’s okay. I’m okay. I’m not going to die. We will find a solution._

He silently repeated his mantra to himself again and again until Sam awoke and they finally pulled into the next town.

For once, Dean was the one up late, doing research, while Sam slept.

Sam thought he was out at a bar—a normal activity for him. But unbeknownst to Sam, the moment he had left their motel room, Dean had called Bobby.

Now, he was ensconced at a computer in the local library, conducting an evidently futile search for leads on the Trickster.

When Bobby called him back, he answered immediately.

“Did you find him?” Dean asked in lieu of an actual greeting.

He heard Bobby grumble over the line. “Not quite—”

“I need a lead, Bobby,” Dean interrupted.

“Then shut up, idjit, and let me speak.”

Dean shut up.

“As I was saying,” Bobby grumbled, “I didn’t find him, but I have a good idea where he may be headed. For obvious reasons, such as thinking the bastard was dead, we lost his trail after Springfield, but now that we know one place he’s been recently, we can backtrack his steps and see what direction he’s been heading.”

“Won’t he change his route now that he knows we must be looking for him?” Dean questioned.

Bobby made a noncommittal sound. “It’s always possible, but it’s still our best bet.”

“Alright, what do you have then?”

“Well, he’s actually jumped around a lot, and not necessarily in the same direction either—Don’t you sigh at me, boy!” Bobby snapped. Dean closed his mouth. “Like I said, he’s jumped around a lot. However, those jumps are never more than a state or two away.”

“How’d you track him?”

“Same as how we figured out it was a trickster in the first place: his ‘just desserts’. Each town I found had one that matched his M.O.”

Dean fingered the knife in his jacket pocket. “Where’s the closest one?”

“There’s a guy in Fargo, Georgia. Real prick. Fits the Trickster’s victim profile perfectly.”

“Thanks, Bobby,” Dean said sincerely.

“Be careful. You boys watch out for each other now.”

Dean swallowed. “We will,” he said. Then he hung up.

Dean sneaked back into their motel room.

Sam was asleep.

He left a note.

By the time Dean arrived in Fargo, he had five missed calls from Sam and two from Bobby. They had each left a voicemail as well.

Sam’s was a simple, “This is a bad idea, Dean. Call me.”

Bobby’s irate message was longer: “You stupid idjit. This is _not_ how you boys watch out for each other. Don’t you dare go and get yourself killed—” Dean hung up. The rest of the message would just be more of the same, he was sure.

Dean turned off his phone.

Driving through Fargo, he quickly located the Trickster’s presumed target: a diner owner who had all kinds of security to keep his employees from stealing anything more than a crumb, yet was embezzling from his own business to fund a gambling problem.

Dean parked the Impala outside the diner and settled in to wait.

Dean’s mind drifted in the calm quiet of the stakeout. Unfortunately, it didn’t drift to pleasant places.

The words his dream self had spat at him echoed eerily in his head.

_“A good soldier and nothing else. Daddy’s blunt little instrument. Your own father didn’t care whether you lived or died, why should you?”_

The words he had shouted in response to his own taunts seemed pale and hollow now.

_“My father was an obsessed bastard! All that crap he dumped on me about protecting Sam, that was his crap. He’s the one who couldn’t protect his family. He’s the one who let mom die; who wasn’t there for Sam. I always was! He wasn’t fair! I didn’t deserve what he put on me, and I don’t deserve to go to Hell!”_

He still believed them. They were still the truth. He _hadn’t_ deserved the weight of responsibility his father had made him bear as a child. He _didn’t_ deserve to go to Hell.

Had he made mistakes? Of course. Had he done things that weren’t quite on the righteous path? All the time.

But Hell? Becoming a demon? No.

The good he’d done. Saving people. Hunting things. All of that, he felt, should have tipped the scales in favour of the upstairs place. If Heaven even existed.

So, even though it was harder—much harder, sometimes—to truly believe in what he had said to his dream self, he clung to those statements with everything he had.

He clung onto them for Sam. Because even though he had agreed to try harder to find a way not to be dragged to hell, after what had happened to Sam at the hands of the Trickster and his brother’s concerning reaction to it, Dean knew he couldn’t leave Sam alone.

One day, he would have to, and he was fine with that. But not like this. Not now.

But, in the privacy of his own mind, Dean could admit to himself that there was one other thing that he felt he didn’t deserve. A desire that he had kept buried deep enough that Sam, Bobby or anybody else couldn’t see it in him.

The vision of Lisa, calling to him and telling him that he needed to pick up Ben, as if they were a family, formed in his mind as he watched the diner.

Though the sun was warm and the inside of the Impala was hot, Dean shivered. With longing. With regret. With fear.

Sam was his family. Bobby too. He didn’t need anybody else. Didn’t deserve anything more than what he had.

It was enough, he told himself. It had to be enough, because he wasn’t getting anything more.

A wife. Kids. A little house with a white picket fence. None of that was meant for him.

He knew that when he had left Lisa behind for the second time. He knew that now, sitting alone in his car.

Even if they managed to stop the death sentence hanging over his head, he still knew that.

Dean’s hands clenched into fists, and he lowered his head to stare at them.

If only his heart knew it too.

A few hours later, a small sedan with rental plates pulled up behind the Impala and Sam stepped out. No doubt thanks to Bobby passing along the information he had given Dean to Sam as well.

Dean groaned.

The Trickster still hadn’t shown, so he had nothing to show for his deception.

From the corner of his eye, gaze still on the diner, Dean watched Sam climb into the Impala’s passenger seat.

“I told you I didn’t want to go after him,” Sam said softly. “Do you want to get yourself killed?”

Dean turned his head to face his brother. “I wasn’t planning on it. I was planning on killing the bastard for killing me a thousand times.”

Sam met his gaze, eyes sad and serious. “He’s too powerful, Dean. We have to leave him be.”

Dean opened his mouth to protest, when Sam added, “For now, at least.”

Dean folded his arms across his chest and looked away, back at the diner across the street. “Fine.”

Sam let out a relieved sigh. He opened the Impala’s door and placed one foot on the curb. “The car rental depot is on the other side of town. I’ll meet you there.”

Without looking at Sam, Dean said, “But I will kill him. For what he did to you.”

Sam was silent for a moment. Dean wondered if he would finally reveal whatever else had happened to make Sam so reserved and… scared.

“I’m fine, Dean,” he finally said. “I’ll meet you there,” he repeated. Then he stepped out and closed the car door behind him.

_Sam’s okay. I’m okay. I’m not going to die. We _will_ find a solution._

Dean started the Impala’s engine.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the creators/mods of SPN Swan Song Bingo!  
And so many thanks to thefandomsinhalor for being my beta!


End file.
